What I think you and a lot of other commenters are unaware of is how convoluted ship ownership is, for tax avoidance purposes. It seems like many people assume that Israeli ships are the ones with Israeli flags and for some reason Bahamas people have a shit ton of ships, probably because there's a lot of water around there, right? This ignorance fuels the acceptance of the narrative that Houthis are rebel scum or pirates that are so dumb they keep attacking the wrong ships, but the truth actually speaks to their sophistication and intent.

Plus so many Israelis are dual citizens, like Dan David Ungar from the article I linked, who is also a British citizen and lives in Israel and is the son of the richest man is Israel, so saying "owned by a British citizen" is not untrue but it is a disingenuous service to the truth.

Let's not fall for the narrative.

[–] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 1 points 9 months ago

Oh yea, and the "nebulous link to Israelis" is called argument from incredulity.

[–] FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Even if he owns that ship and no one else does it's still a random ship, if the houthies were actually trying to blockade Israel this would be very different. So far they have attacked 2 Russian oil tankers with no connection to Israel, that alone is enough to see they arent targeting their attacks in any way and it's just piracy with using the troubles inflicted on the Palestinians as a shield. It's literally genocide profiteering.

[–] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I hadn't heard of the Russian tanker thing, thanks. This must be what you're talking about:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthis-mistakenly-target-tanker-carrying-russian-oil-ambrey-report-2024-01-12/

and it says that

Ambrey assessed that the vessel was mistakenly targeted based on outdated publicly available information linking the vessel to the United Kingdom.

"This appeared to be five months old but was still listed as UK-affiliated on a public maritime database," the report said.

So maybe it was the same situation as the other UK-affiliated ship we were talking about, not sure. I still don't understand how you don't equate Houthi action to American sanctions on Russian oligarch ships in the hopes that they convince Putin to stop his war in Ukraine.

[–] FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago

Because they haven't yet targeted a ship supplying Israel. They are raiding ships that are vulnerable and not much else by the look of these attacks, most non-military ships are coming from Saudi Arabia and most are heading to India, not a single one coming or going to Israel.